AmateurRadio.com

I have been involved in the Service Industry for all of my adult working life.  I have worked in photo studios, photo laboratories, photo retail, professional photographic equipment distribution and service, and most recently in the IT field through inventory control and logistics.

Throughout that period, there was one Prime Directive (to borrow the term from Star Trek), and that is that Customer Service is, was, and always will be #1. Coming up close to 40 years in the field now, I can attest to how that’s not always the easiest philosophy to live up to; but it is paramount. For truly, years of hard work to build up a solid reputation can be squandered in mere seconds by an instance of lousy customer service. And once you have squandered your reputation and credibility, even with one person and in one instance, word can get around so quickly that it can take years to get back to where you started from.

“What has this to do with Amateur Radio?”, you are probably asking yourself. 

There are many service and product providers in the Amateur Radio market, as small as this niche is. We have many places where we can spend our heard earned dollars. There are many very good companies out there that will bend over backward to make sure that your experience with them is the best possible one that you can have.  On the other hand, there are also companies out there who quite literally (excuse my language) don’t give a damn what you care about or want.  All they want is your dollars and once they have them, you are pretty much dead to them.  Thankfully, thankfully, thankfully these companies are the smallest minority and they usually die a pretty quick death, going out of business rather quickly.

On the other end of the spectrum are the companies that go out of their way to ensure that you are happy and satisfied.  In my experience, Elecraft has done an exemplary job in that department. I have been a happy Elecraft owner since 2003, when I first bought my K1.  Since then, I have purchased and built a K2, a K3 and a KX3, along with numerous sub-kits and accessories. In each instance, I had a great experience. The manuals are extremely well thought out, leaving (at least in my case) no doubt as to how things are supposed to go together. In the two instances where my kits were missing parts, or had a wrong part shipped – a quick e-mail to Elecraft got me the needed pieces in literally a day or two.

I have been fortunate that my radios worked right off my assembly line. However, I do know of instances where that has not been the case for other Hams, for one reason or another.  In those cases, it seems that the help that was received from Elecraft via the telephone from their outstanding staff,  or from the Elecraft e-mail reflector(s) where other Elecraft enthusiasts congregate got them up and running quickly.  I also personally know of instances where “stuff has happened” and telephone calls to Elecraft brought timely solutions, even though the equipment in question would have been considered out of warranty by any other manufacturer.

All that being said, the clincher came for me just prior to Field Day, this year.  On QRP-L, many of the guys were beginning to list where their QRP Field Day efforts were going to be held.  I chimed in with information about where the South Plainfield Amateur Radio Club’s effort was going to be, and I also mentioned that we were going to be all QRP, using my KX3s as our HF transmitters. Out of the blue, that night I received a private e-mail from Wayne Burdick N6KR, one of the principal owners of the company. In the e-mail he informed me that he read my posting to QRP-L and saw that we were going to be using my KX3s. So from there, Wayne proceeded to tell me how to set up the KX3s so that they would cause minimal interference to each other in close quarters.  And that information, which he also posted to the KX3 and general Elecraft e-mail reflectors, turned out to be a life saver.  After we first got going, it turned out that the SSB station was just swamping me out, and I was basically doing the same to them.  When that became apparent, I whipped out the printed e-mail from my back pocket (it was next to my Swiss Army Knife), made the setting changes and from there we were in like Flynn. The two stations sat side-by-side and hummed along for the rest of Field Day – fat, dumb and happy!

This boggled my mind.  One of the owners of Elecraft was keeping his eye on QRP-L, saw that one of his customers would be using their product and then graciously offered tips on how to make the radios work even better.  That, my friends is ADVANCED customer service – the stuff upon which legends are born.

Now don’t get me wrong. No company in this world is perfect. Far from it. Heck, just go to the Elecraft reflectors and you’ll find lots of instances where people feel they haven’t been satisfied and take ample opportunity to vent.  Some of it may be justified, and some of it is pure nonsense.  But in my mind at least, Elecraft is a very bright spot in the Amateur Radio market, and I would recommend them highly to anyone. And aside from Amateur Radio, I think that they are a shining example to all industries on what great Customer Service is and should be.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

Larry Makoski, W2LJ, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Jersey, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

Unfortunately, our concerns were well-founded. Yesterday, on the AMSAT bulletin board, the official news of VO-52’s passing was announced.

The loss of VO-52 leaves quite a gap. What I enjoyed about it particularly, was that it was the one of the linear transponders that could be used with very simple antennas. My V2000 vertical worked very well for a variety of contacts. I just wish I had started using it earlier.

VO-52 had a great downlink signal and was always in transponder mode (AO-73 is great, but I rarely hear it in transponder mode, or if I do, it’s usually brief, as it switches over to telemetry). So, hopefully the new generation of satellites which will be coming on stream soon – some already in orbit doing other things, waiting to be activated into their amateur radio roles – others waiting to be launched.

A good time to remember to support AMSAT (a VO-52 lookalike would work very well, thank you…)

Tim Kirby, G4VXE, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Oxfordshire, England. Contact him at [email protected].

Unfortunately, our concerns were well-founded. Yesterday, on the AMSAT bulletin board, the official news of VO-52’s passing was announced.

The loss of VO-52 leaves quite a gap. What I enjoyed about it particularly, was that it was the one of the linear transponders that could be used with very simple antennas. My V2000 vertical worked very well for a variety of contacts. I just wish I had started using it earlier.

VO-52 had a great downlink signal and was always in transponder mode (AO-73 is great, but I rarely hear it in transponder mode, or if I do, it’s usually brief, as it switches over to telemetry). So, hopefully the new generation of satellites which will be coming on stream soon – some already in orbit doing other things, waiting to be activated into their amateur radio roles – others waiting to be launched.

A good time to remember to support AMSAT (a VO-52 lookalike would work very well, thank you…)

Tim Kirby, G4VXE, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Oxfordshire, England. Contact him at [email protected].

[gview file=”https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/15763538/Bennett_Kobb_HOPE2014.pdf”]

Is a new “CB” allocation of 100-200 MHz in the 3.5 GHz microwave band just around the corner? Possibly, according to Bennett Kobb, AK4AV. Not “Citizens Band” but “Citizens Broadband Radio Service.” Scroll through the embedded presentation above. Quite interesting.

Source: Hackaday

Matt Thomas, W1MST, is the managing editor of AmateurRadio.com. Contact him at [email protected].

Band conditions seem to have vastly deteriorated from what they were just a few months ago. It’s not that propagation is non-existent, it’s just that it seems to have left us in a bigger hurry than I would have thought.

I went out at lunchtime today (around 1730Z) to find activity on 15 Meters to be nil.  A quick scan of 17 Meters revealed not so much.  Just a few months ago, both these bands were hopping with all kinds of DX. It wasn’t all that rare to hear Europe, South America and Asia all at the same time! It wasn’t all that rare to hear a good amount of activity on 12 and 10 Meters just a few short months ago.

Since 15 and 17 seemed inactive, I went to 14.061 MHz and called CQ after QRLing to make sure the frequency was dead.  I was answered by fellow New Jerseyan, QRPer and blogger, Chris KQ2RP who gave me a 559 from Maine.

After that, I worked fellow Polar Bear, Ken WA8REI who is having a hard time enduring the heat and humidity in Michigan.  It’s hard to put up with the Temperature Humidity Index when you have so much fur! 😉  Ken was a good solid 579 here when the QSB wasn’t wreaking havoc. We had a nice little chat and then it was time for Ken to go, and my available lunchtime minutes were growing short, too.

Before heading in, I decided to check out 17 Meters one more time.  There, blasting in at 599+ was GA14CG, the Special Event Station for the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Scotland.  There was a bit of a pileup, but he was so loud that I figured that I could work him, if only I could place myself correctly.

With time running short, I was able to eventually find the right spot.  GA14CG was using the ol’ racetrack pattern scheme. Start at a frequency, move a bit higher after each call, reach a high point and then continue to work stations, moving a bit lower after each QSO until arriving at starting point and starting the process all over again. Essentially, he was doing laps, which I guess was appropriate considering it’s the Commonwealth Games.  I placed myself correctly on the return trip home and got into the log. They’re on the air until August 3rd, so you have plenty of time to work them.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

Larry Makoski, W2LJ, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Jersey, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

Courtesy: STCE Newsletter

My recent postings of Cycle 24's performance has made me wonder about previous cycles. I'm still hunting for the source, but I recall reading of Cycle 19's F2 MUF actually peaking out at over 70MHz on several days of that monster cycle! Knowing just how rare (and difficult) it is to get the F2 MUF to even approach 50MHz, reaching 70MHz is just further testimony to Cycle 19's unheralded performance. I can only imagine how exciting 6m must have sounded at those times, with intercontinental signals of bone-crushing strength.

Although Cycle 19 may be the largest in recorded history, our documentation of solar activity only began in 1759, or Cycle 1. We know that our sun is roughly 7.5 billion years old and in relative terms, evolved rather quickly into something close to what we see today as a main-sequence star. Assuming an 11 year cycle, that's roughly 409 million solar cycles or half that number if you consider the 22-year pole-reversal cycle. Either way you look at it, that's a lot of cycles! I'd be willing to wager that several thousands of these cycles, if not hundreds of thousands, would have made Cycle 19 look pretty wimpy by comparison.

Such cycles make me wonder...just how high could the F2 MUF reach during those cycles?....would it reach 2m or even beyond? It's hard to imagine world-wide F2 propagation on 2m or higher, but why not?

With the Sun almost half-way through its life, there is no question that there are many more gigantic cycles yet to play out. With the existence of radio and human life being just a momentary flash in time, I wonder if any of them will ever be enjoyed by radio amateurs?
Steve McDonald, VE7SL, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from British Columbia, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

Hello, everyone! In this, our last episode before our scheduled time off and retooling session, we interview Indiegogo donor Ben Schram from Perth, Western Australia. Ben is an avid listener, contributor to many crowd funding campaigns, Linux enthusiast and soon-to-be amateur radio operator. We discuss everything in this episode from high-speed rail systems to FCC Part 97 rules changes to the great AMC television series The Walking Dead. See you in September!

73 de The LHS Guys

Russ Woodman, K5TUX, co-hosts the Linux in the Ham Shack podcast which is available for download in both MP3 and OGG audio format. Contact him at [email protected].